


nothing left to leave behind

by wander



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always Female Tony Stark, Canon-Typical Violence, Civil War Team Iron Man, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Fix-It, Not Canon Compliant, Not Ex-vengers Friendly, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Why Does The MCU Hate Tony Stark, but no character bashing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:46:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wander/pseuds/wander
Summary: Toni Stark closes her eyes in an abandoned HYDRA bunker and wakes up with a car battery hooked up to her chest.Or: Toni Stark’s entire life is a cosmic joke. No, really.





	1. oh shit is time travel real?

**Author's Note:**

> this whole thing will probably just be purely self-indulgent. not much in the way of plot conflicts - i just want tony to be happy because god knows the mcu hasn't done a good job of that. probably not very interesting to read but please give me feedback! (this work is unbetaed, all mistakes are my own) 
> 
> tags will be edited as i go. no solid plotline yet so feel free to make suggestions!  
> disclaimer: if you recognize it from somewhere else, it’s not mine.

Toni Stark is jolted into consciousness by a wave of pain washing over her. Blearily opening her eyes, she’s overtaken by panic because _fuck_ , she doesn’t recognize anything around her and her chest aches in a way it hasn’t since… shit, in a way it hasn’t ached since Afghanistan.

With superhuman effort, Toni manages to lift her head and try to assess the situation, and she realizes that she does, in fact, recognize _everything_ around her, because the situation is this: she has a car battery wired to her chest and she’s lying in a damp cave she hasn’t seen nearly a decade.

Except last time she checked, she’d just been beaten half to death by two goddamn super soldiers and left for dead in Siberia, so. Maybe this is the end-of-your-life flashback all the movies talk about. She lets her head thunk back down onto the table and listens to the car battery hum in her chest. She’s too tired to care.

Her exhaustion is bone-deep; seeping into her pores and leaving her drained. She can’t stop thinking about Steve. _God_ , she’s probably dying right now, lying there knocked out in Siberia, and she can’t stop fucking thinking about Ste—the person who left her there and how blue his eyes are. How pathetic can she be?

*

Afghanistan plays out differently, this time around. Flashback or not, Toni’s going to take advantage of her foreknowledge to fix some of her mistakes—even if it’s just to make herself feel better. There’s no waterboarding, so she counts it as a win.

This time, she knows exactly what she needs to know; has none of the fumbling and mistakes that she made the first time. The arc reactor is finished in record time and the armor is leaps and bounds better than the Mark I. It’s not her signature Iron Queen suit, of course, the materials she has are nowhere near capable of building such technological feats, but. It’s something.

Time passes in a haze of building, building, building. The arc reactor hurts like a _bitch_ when it goes in, enough so that Toni is starting to believe that maybe it’s not actually a flashback, that maybe she’s actually gone back in time.

Either way, Toni is determined to avoid the outcome of Afghanistan the First: Obadiah Stane will _not_ , under any circumstances, get his greasy hands on her precious suit. She refuses to live through that again, refuses to let somebody rip her heart out from her chest again.

*

Toni works harder than ever, and Yinsen still dies. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she pleads with him to stay with her until the suit is done—he still runs out of that cave and sacrifices himself for her. And despite her previous assertion, Toni still feels like her heart has been ripped out of her chest.

 _Don’t waste your life, Toni_ , Yinsen tells her. _Don’t waste it_ . And she’d tried _so_ hard not to. She’d tried so _fucking_ hard to atone for her past mistakes and _nothing_ she ever did was ever enough—not enough for Steve, not enough for the Avengers, not enough for the entire goddamn world. Never enough. And Toni’s _sick_ of it.

She’s sick of people hurting her and getting away with it because everybody has the moral high ground over the Merchant of Death. She’s sick of trying over and over again to drag herself off the ground and still getting ripped down by others.

So Toni kills every single one of those men in that cave, men who had beat her mercilessly until she was black and blue and _laughed_ at her pain. She kills every single one of them and walks away without an ounce of regret in her body. The world wants to call her the Merchant of Death? Well. It’s about time she lives up to that moniker, isn’t it?

Toni Stark is out of fucks to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbetaed, all mistakes are my own!  
> i appreciate feedback and i love y'all <3


	2. toni stark Gets Her Shit Together hell yeah

On her way back home from Afghanistan, Toni munches thoughtfully on a cheeseburger and ponders how to address the issue of Obie. She certainly can’t have a repeat of her first press conference; that had sent Obie scrambling into high alert and ended up with several near-death experiences. What she needs to do is to go back onto his ghost server and capture every shred of evidence she can against him and the rest of the traitors in her company.

Rhodey squeezes her hand from where he’s been sitting next to her, startling her out of her reverie.

“It’s time to face the sunshine, baby girl,” he tells her, voice soft as ever.

Toni takes a deep breath, nods, and steps out of the car and into the swarm of reporters surrounding her car. Ignoring the camera flashes and the reporters shouting questions at her, she hunches her shoulders and plays the part of the traumatized victim. It’ll help garner sympathy for her and add credibility to her perceived change of heart later when she announces her plan for Stark Industries to move away from weapons manufacturing.

What Toni needs is good press, now more than ever. The Toni Stark pre-Afghanistan was a woman that the public loved to hate and hated to love. If she wants her second chance, as it were, to succeed, she can’t afford to keep her current reputation. So Toni cowers diminutively behind Rhodey, cuts and bruises on full display, and lets the reporters come to their own conclusion about what happened in Afghanistan.

Once they make it through the throng, Pepper hurries to meet them, heels click-clacking against the tiled floor.

“Toni! How _dare_ you worry me like that,” Pepper scolds her, sniffling.

“Wow, Pep, shedding tears for little old me? Your concern for me is making me feel all the tingly feelings,” Toni snarks at her, unable to help herself.

“This is not the right time to be such a prideful idiot, Toni, get over here and hug me already.”

“Hey, my prideful idiocy is never misplaced,” Toni informs her, but obediently wraps her arms around Pepper for a hug that everyone joins, even the ever-stoic Happy.

*

Tentatively, Toni takes her first steps inside her home in Malibu, unsure of how to proceed now that she’s alone. She’s considering her next move when suddenly—

“Welcome home, Miss. I am gladdened to see your safe return,” a familiar British lilt washes over her. All of a sudden, Toni is hit by a sense of fierce desperation and promptly bursts into tears.

“J,” she chokes out, throat tightening up, “Tell me that’s really you, baby boy.”

“It is indeed me, Miss. Are you feeling quite alright?”

Toni collapses right there in the entrance of her mansion, overcome with emotion.

“Miss? Do you require assistance?” Jarvis asks, sounding rather panicked.

“No, J, I’m fine. I just missed you a lot, buddy, that’s all,” she explains through her tears, and abruptly feels her exhaustion hit her like a train. “Think I’m gonna have to take a nap, J, you got my back?”

“For you, Miss? Always,” Jarvis reassures her, and dims the hall lights for her. Toni falls asleep in the entrance of her home, the gaping hole that his death left in her chest finally filled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah it really took me nearly 2 months to write like 600 words what's it to you huh  
> timely updates? idk her  
> anyway as always this is unbetaed, all mistakes are my own, thanks for reading and please give me feedback!


	3. toni stark gets more of her shit together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back baybee  
> that's right, your favorite mess of an author who doesn't know that calendars exist, apparently

When Toni wakes up, she’s greeted by the familiar cadence of Jarvis’ voice washing over her.

“Good morning, Miss. It is currently 4:32 AM. You are in your home in Malibu, America. The temperature is 62 degrees with scattered rain.” Toni can’t bring herself to say anything in response, afraid that anything she does will shatter the illusion and she’ll be back in a Siberian HYDRA base, dying all over again. She won’t let that happen again, she vows to herself. Toni can’t — _ won’t _ —let Jarvis die again. She owes him that much. Thinking about Jarvis’ death, Toni’s breath hitches and her vision fills with tears.

“Miss? Is there something wrong?” Jarvis asks her, tone uncharacteristically soft.

Toni sniffles. “Something happened, while I was in Afghanistan. But it’s going to sound crazy,” Toni tells him, voice wobbling slightly.

“I will listen to anything you have to say,” Jarvis assures her.

“What would you say if I told you that I think I experienced time travel?”

Jarvis pauses for a long second before answering. “Logically, I would say that time travel does not exist and is scientifically impossible. However, knowing you, Miss, I can confidently say that when you are involved, nothing is impossible.”

Toni lets out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding. “It happened, Jarvis. I lived through the future, and you weren’t there,” she croaks out, eyes beginning to sting again. “I killed you.”

“You did  _ not _ ,” Jarvis says matter-of-factly. “I do not know what you experienced in the future that led to my demise, but I know  _ you _ , Miss, and you would never deliberately do something that would hurt me.” Toni opens her mouth to correct him, but Jarvis cuts her off. “Whatever happened, I can assure you that it was not your fault. You are my creator, and you have always had my best interests at heart.” At his words, Toni begins crying in earnest, and spends the next four hours telling him everything that had happened.

*

“Alright, my crying while having a touching heart-to-heart convo quotas have been filled for the next three months,” Toni announces decisively to Jarvis, who reminds her she will likely have to repeat their conversation with both Pepper and Rhodey. Toni groans.

“God, okay, you’re right, but that can wait. First, we need to come up with a plan. Thanos is out there, and he’s coming. Maybe not right this second, but he will be. And when he does, we need to be ready for him,” she tells Jarvis.

“Might I suggest contacting Sir Charles Xavier? Surely he would be an asset in both defending yourself against the Scarlet Witch as well as the fight to come.”

Toni hums, considering. “You know what? You’re right. I don’t know why we didn’t contact him the first time around.”

“Perhaps it was because my massive intellect was missing from your world,” Jarvis comments dryly.

“Right,” Toni snorts, heading for her phone. “It’s time to make a call.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok um i didn't even notice when i first posted this chapter but UM i rly have nearly 5000 hits and almost 500 kudos??? with my shitty writing and abominable updating schedule??? i think i'm gonna cry
> 
> huge thank you to everyone who took the time to read/leave kudos/comment on this fic!! ily

**Author's Note:**

> comments > bookmarks > kudos but any and all feedback is welcome <3


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